The Basic Practice of Meditation. Listening to Your Soul.

“For all that meditation provides, it merely asks of us that we take time to do it, to simply put a few minutes aside to steady our thoughts and learn to see the beauty and wisdom that lies beyond them.” ~ Rod Stryker

In order to engage the rest of the exercises this book offers, we need to pause here and begin to develop a personal relationship with our mind. But how can we calm down our minds? In yoga, we use meditation for this purpose. We assume that meditation requires a lot from us to do (and don’t get me wrong, it requires all of us to do), but what it doesn’t require is stuff. You don’t need a cushion, a bell, or even blankets. They help, but don’t let not having “stuff” stop you from starting a meditation practice. What we do need, however, is much harder to come by: time.

Lets stop here, pause, and think about this. We need a few minutes a day (start with 3-5 minutes) in our meditation practice to steady our thoughts. Why do we need this time? Pratyahara. Essentially we start by practicing the 5th limb of Patanjali Yoga. Pratyahara is the withdrawal or mastery of the senses. Rod says “Unless we learn how to see beyond what our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin are telling us, we can never experience the totality of who we are or the world of which we are a part.”

Our calendars are filled with activities. We have school, work, appointments, meetings, birthdays, anniversaries, trips, trainings…the list goes on. We need to use our senses to perform all of these activities. Often times, many of these activities are done in the subconscious haze of multi-tasking. And society praises us for that?